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Issues with concrete and rebar at Southern Nuclear's $14 billion Plant Vogtle project in Georgia have been resolved. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the company's amendment to the construction license to increase the "compressive strength of the concrete to be poured around the rebar from 4,000 pounds per square inch to 5,000" to keep it in seismic compliance. It also approved a 4-inch variability in the basemat's levelness.

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The $14 billion construction of two new reactors at Southern Co.'s Plant Vogtle in Georgia will be closely monitored around the world, said Bernard Bigot, chairman of France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February approved the combined construction and operating license for the units, which are set to come online in 2016 and 2017. "It is a great concern, everywhere, of people investing in nuclear," he said, adding he is confident that the project will be successful.

Southern Co. has decided to defer for seven months the completion of its first new nuclear reactor as it waits for a decision about who will pay $400 million worth of unexpected costs. Work on the $14 billion Plant Vogtle reactor project in Georgia will be completed by November 2016 instead of April of that year. "I can't say that it's highly likely that the cost would be able to maintain, you know, the current projections without some kind of potential adjustment if those cost pressures continue to mount," said David McKinney, Southern Co.'s vice president for nuclear construction.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected a petition from several environmental groups that sought to postpone the $14 billion construction of two new reactors at Southern Nuclear's Plant Vogtle in Georgia, saying there was no guarantee it would win in court. "Petitioners simply have not shown, from a [National Environmental Policy Act] perspective, that the Fukushima events or our potential regulatory responses to those events reveal environmental impacts that differ significantly from those the NRC has already studied," NRC Secretary Annette Vietti-Cook wrote in the decision.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is satisfied with the results of concrete tests done on the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio despite not being able to validate the cause of the cracks in the reactor's shield building. Area residents were assured that the building underwent a "vigorous inspection," according to Cynthia Pederson, a regional director of the NRC. FirstEnergy, the operator of the plant, has until the end of February to determine the cause of the cracks.

Georgia Power, developer of the $14 billion
Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Ga., in its semi-annual filing, reported that the project remains within budget but will increase its spending oversight. The project tests the developer's capacity to stay on budget after construction of the first two reactors at Plant Vogtle jumped from an initial estimate of $660 million to $9 billion by the time the plant became operational in 1987.